The Apollo Gardens

Eighteenth century Birmingham was graced, at different times, with two sites called the Apollo Gardens.

John Tomlinson’s Plan of Aston Manor, 1758, reduced in Plans of Birmingham and vicinity, ancient and modern,1884 [Ref. MAP/45209]

Holte Bridgman’s Apollo Gardens are shown on John Tomlinson’s Plan of Aston Manor, surveyed in 1758 [Ref. MAP/45209], on the north-east corner of the junction of Lichfield Road and Rocky Lane. The date when the gardens were first open to the public is not known.

On May 9^th 1748 it was reported,

Whereas the Performance of Music and Fire-Works at Bridgman’s Gardens, at the Apollo at Aston, near Birmingham, was to have been on Thursday last, but the Inclemency of the Weather preventing ‘tis postpon’d to next Thursday Evening, when a grand Trio of Mr. Handel’s out of Acis and Galatea, and that favourite Duet of Arne’s call’d Damon and Cloe, will be perform’d by Mr.Bridgman, and a Gentleman of the Town… ¹

The concerts were promoted by Barnabas Gunn, the first organist at St. Phillip’s church, who also promoted concerts at Sawyers Assembly Rooms and at the theatre in Moor Street. He was also,

…notable as a composer, producing sonatas and solos for harpsichord, violin and cello, and ‘Two Cantatas and Six Songs’ of 1736 that included George Frederick Handel among its subscribers.²

On Monday July 15^th 1751 ‘Eleven of the Gentlemen of the Holte Bridgman’s Club and Eleven of the Gentlemen of Mr Thomas Bellamy’s Club’ met at the Apollo Gardens for ‘the most of three innings, for Twenty-Two Guineas’, the first recorded cricket match to take place in the district.³

Despite their varied programme, they do not appear to have been a financial success as in 1751 Holte Bridgeman reputedly closed the Apollo Gardens and resumed his former occupation as a house painter.⁴  It is possible that it was eclipsed by the Vauxhall Gardens which opened at approximately this time and was equidistant  from Birmingham.⁵

The second Apollo Gardens were also in the parish of Aston but on the other side of Birmingham town beside the river Rea on the newly laid out Moseley Street.

Top image showing John Snape’s 1779 plan of the parish of Birmingham; bottom image showing John Tomlinson’s 1760 plan of the manor of Bordesley, both reduced in Plans of Birmingham and vicinity, ancient and modern,1884 [Ref. MAP/45209]

By comparing John Snape’s 1779 plan of the parish of Birmingham with John Tomlinson’s 1760 plan of the manors of Deritend and Bordesley (in Aston parish) [both Ref. MAP/45209], we can see that the tortuous meanderings of the Rea formed the natural boundary between the two parishes.

The meandering Rea of the last quarter of the eighteenth century has been described as a ‘clear running brook’ ‘flowing betwixt smiling meadows past field paths gay with wild flowers’. ^{6; 1}

In 1767 Henry Bradford, wishing to develop his property but faced with a reluctance to build on land that, at the bottom of the hill, cut through the Rea’s flood plain, offered,

To be given gratis, some fee land pleasantly situated for building on, in Bradford Street, Deritend, to any person that will build upon the said land and carry on a considerable trade there.⁷

This endeavour seems to have met with little success for in 1771 he offered land near Camp Hill for lease at half the price of land on the other side of the Rea.⁸ This must have eventually proved successful for by 1778 the area was covered by a grid of new streets with building plots laid out on each, as shown in Thomas Hanson’s 1778 map below. Bradford Street was paralleled by Cheapside and Moseley Street with Lombard Street and Birchole Street crossing between them.

Plan of Birmingham,1778, by Thomas Hanson [Ref. MAL/14004]

The Apollo Hotel and gardens, the smaller of three Birmingham pleasure gardens: Vauxhall, Strawberry Fields & Apollo, lay at the lower end of the newly laid out Moseley Street where the first meander of the Rea to the east of Deritend bridge ran parallel with the new road. Showell tells us that it ‘Opened as a public resort in 1786 ….The first tenant did not prosper.’ ⁶

 In April 1786 Edward Hastin, a builder who had leased Porter’s Meadow, alongside the opposite side of the Rea, from Charles Glover for 117 years, laid out Rea Street promising to begin building houses along it within the year.⁸

An advertisement in March of the following year offered to let,

That new-erected large and commodious Public House, called the Apollo-Hotel, together with a spacious Bowling Green and Gardens, thereto adjoining, and with or without about four Acres of Pasture Land, pleasantly situated in a new Street, called Moseley Street, in the Hamlet of Deritend, on the Banks of the River Rea, and not more than four hundred yards from the Market Place in Birmingham.⁹

Describing it as ‘peculiarly adapted for Public and Musical Entertainment’ and adding that ‘The Place is in an improving state and increasing neighbourhood.’ ¹⁰

Plan of Birmingham Survey’d in the Year 1792, engraved and published by Charles Pye, surveyor not stated [Ref. MAP/72833]

The above map of Birmingham published in 1792 shows Bradford Street, Cheapside and Moseley Street extending across the river Rea on new bridges to cross Rea Street.

Writing some eighty years later a lady recalled that in her childhood,

There used to be pleasure boats for rowing parties up the river under Deritend Bridge, then just finished and put up in place of the old pier bridge. Having passed Bradford Street and Cheapside bridges they arrived at the lovely sequestered and elegant gardens of Apollo House in Moseley Street.¹¹

Pleasure boats could also be hired at the Apollo.¹²

In 1787 Parliament was petitioned for an Act for widening Deritend bridge, taking down houses that narrowed the road on the approaches to the bridge and for ‘provision for varying the course of the river, widening the channel, and preventing floods.’ ¹³  The Act, passed in the following year empowered the trustees to take tolls for four years and thereafter to levy a rate.¹⁴ Although it took two further Acts in 1813 and 1822 to levy sufficient funds to complete the bridge and road widening.¹⁵ Evidence of alterations to the river are apparent by 1808 as seen on the left-hand map below.  The 1810 plan of the parish (on the right-hand side below) shows the new river channel with a marooned ox-bow lake formed by the original meander and the Apollo hotel (not labelled) between the ox-bow lake and Moseley Street.

Image on left: John Kempson, Town of Birmingham, 1808 [ref. MAP/384604]; image on right:John Kempson, Map of the Town and Parish of Birmingham …in the Year 1810, 1811, [Ref. MAP/384603]

The Apollo was listed in Birmingham’s poor rate books until c.1813 (presumably they paid rates on land on the Birmingham side of the river).¹⁶

After it closed as a licensed public house/hotel and pleasure gardens the house was first divided into two residences. In 1816 the house was converted to single residence for William Hamper, an eminent Birmingham antiquarian. He wrote that the prospect from the rear of the house, then renamed Deritend House, was delightful and bounded only by Bromsgrove Lickey.⁶

Trade Directories record William Hamper as living at the house, 51, Moseley Street, until 1823.¹⁷ He was succeeded from 1825 until 1831 by the Reverend Timothy East, the radical Congregationalist minister from the Ebenezer Chapel, Steelhouse Lane, who was to play a leading role in the later revolt against Church rates and in the Chartist movement.¹⁸

Image on left: Surveyor unknown, Birmingham in the Year 1819, from A description of Modern Birmingham, Birmingham, by Charles Pye, 1820 [Ref. MAP/174792]; Image on right: Map of Birmingham… from a minute trigonometrical survey made in the years 1824 & 1825, 1828, by John Piggott Smith reduced in Plans of Birmingham and vicinity, ancient and modern,1884 [Ref. MAP/45209]

Deritend House was labelled for the first time on a map of Birmingham in the Year 1819 (see above map on the left). The more detailed map of 1824-1825 (see above image on the right) shows the building with grounds either side of the vestigial river and several bridges crossing it. Without the regular flow of water this was by then probably less wholesome than it was when the pleasure gardens first opened. The house is apparent in the 1845 tithe map of the parish of Birmingham (shown below) the only building shown on the Deritend side of the boundary. In 1852 the trade directory listed Thomas W. Smith M.D., surgeon, as resident in the house.¹⁹

Plan to accompany Tithe Apportionment Birmingham Saint Thomas, Saint Martin & All Saints, 1845-1848 [Ref. TM 2/6]

In 1861 Apollo House, presumably no longer used solely as a residence, was occupied by William S. Evans, paper box, button bag &c maker.²⁰ By 1869 it would appear that Apollo/Deritend House had been demolished as the directories list Gearing & Leather at the Apollo Works. ²¹

Extract from Ordnance Survey map of Warwickshire XIV.5 (Birmingham), surveyed in 1887, showing Apollo Works and Apollo Row.

This can be seen above on the large scale Ordnance Survey map of 1887 lying nearer to the Rea bridge than the original Apollo House. All trace of the original river loop has vanished beneath industrial and domestic buildings. The name of Apollo had remained not only in the Apollo Works but also in Apollo Row that ran from Charles Henry Street to the river parallel with Moseley Street.

John Townley

Endnotes

1. Aris’s Birmingham Gazette, 9 May 1748, quoted in Handford, Margaret, Sounds Unlikely: Six hundred years of music in Birmingham, 1992, pp. 31 & 33
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_music_of_Birmingham Accessed 05/09/2018
3. Bannister, Jack, The history of Warwickshire County Cricket Club, 1990, p.10
4. Smith, J. S., The Story of Music in Birmingham, 1945, p.11
5. http://vauxhallhistory.org/vauxhall-gardens-birmingham/ accessed 05/03/2018
6. Showell, Walter, Showell’s Dictionary of Birmingham, Birmingham, 1885, p.8
7. Aris’s Birmingham Gazette, 3 August 1767, quoted in McKenna see ref 8.
8. McKenna, Joseph, Birmingham, The Building of a City, 2005
9. Aris’s Birmingham Gazette 5 March 1787, quoted in Langford, John Alfred, Staffordshire and Warwickshire Past and Present, Vol 2, London, 1884, p.14
10. Upton, Christopher, A History of Birmingham, 1993, p.78
11. Birmingham Daily Gazette, 1866 quoted in https://billdargue.jimdo.com/placenames-gazetteer-a-to-y/places-d/deritend/ accessed 05/03/2018
12. Birmingham & Warwickshire Archaeological Society Transactions, Vols 26-29, 1901, p.56
13. Dunn, Samuel, General Index to the Journals of the House of Commons, 1774-1800, 1827, p.189
14. 28 Geo. 3. C.70 Deritend Bridge, Birmingham: Rebuilding Act 1788
15. Smith, William, A New and Compendious History of the County of Warwick, Birmingham, 1830, p.358
16. Poor Rate Levy Book Birmingham 1810-1813 [Ref CP/B/19 MS 244519, p. 515]
17. Trade Directories 1816-1823: Commercial Directory for 1816-17, Pigot; Wrightson’s Annual Directory 1818; The Commercial Directory for 1818-19-20, Pigot; The Commercial Directory for 1819-20, Pigot; Wrightson’s Annual Directory 1821; Wrightson’s Annual Directory 1823 & Ward & Price’s New Birmingham Directory 1823.
18. Trade Directories 1825-1831: Wrightson’s Annual Directory 1825; Wightson’s Annual Directory 1829; Pigot & Co’s Commercial Directory of Birmingham and its Environs 1829; Pigot & Co’s Commercial Directory of Birmingham 1830; Wrightson’s Annual Directory 1831.
19. Slater’s General & Classified Directory of Birmingham & its Vicinities, 1852.
20. Corporation, General and Trades Directory of Birmingham ….., 1861
21. The Post Office Directory of Birmingham …., 1869; Hulley’s Birmingham Directory 1870